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BOSTON REALTOR ABRAHAM M. SONNABEND, 58, admits to a fortune of "a few million" made by buying up properties cheap and improving them for resale. Sonnabend has won control (chairman of the board) of Botany Mills, is president of the Childs restaurant chain, now runs a string of seven hotels, including Manhattan's Plaza and Ritz Tower. In 1950 Sonnabend and his associates bought Cleveland's $100 million Van Sweringen property for a total of $35 million, of which they had to put up only $8,000,000.
MISSISSIPPI'S ROBERT C. MILXER, 37, who borrowed $3,000 to open a Shell Oil distributorship when he was 21, now owns businesses grossing $20 million annually, including an export-import company, real-estate holdings in Jackson, Miss. (including a ten-story office building), Milner Products Co., one of the world's biggest makers of pine oil deodorants. With four auto agencies, he is the South's biggest Chevrolet dealer. Milner's income: about $1,000,000 annually, of which he keeps half, since much of it is in capital gains.
SOUTH CAROLINA'S OWEN RAY MOORE, 53, who owns 60% of the American Security Insurance Co., has $250,000 invested in four auto finance companies. In 1945 Investor Moore was one of a half-dozen businessmen to take over North American's idle Dallas airplane plant, helped organize the Texas Engineering and Manufacturing Co. Temco now grosses $72 million a year as an Air Force subcontractor, with profits of $2,668,210. Says Millionaire Moore, who owns 85,534 shares of stock: "Getting in on the ground floor of anything is the surest way to make big gains. You put in $25,000 and suddenly it's worth a million and a half."
CHICAGO'S ARTHUR RUBLOFF, 52, a Russian immigrant's son who began selling real estate at the age of 17, now controls a real-estate firm that grosses $40 million annually, is one of the ten biggest in the U.S. Like Manhattan's William Zeckendorf, Rubloff is a man for grandiose projects, built Chicago's $15 million Evergreen Park shopping center, planned and redeveloped North Kansas City, Mo., launched Chicago's $200 million project to make a "magnificent mile" near the Loop, the city's most spectacular shopping district.
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